(March 25, 2018 at 10:02 am)Hammy Wrote:(March 25, 2018 at 9:30 am)polymath257 Wrote: The problem is that metaphysics doesn't actually allow any real knowledge.
Metaphysics isn't about knowledge. Epistemology is about knowledge. It doesn't try to be about knowledge. It's about starting with sensible premises that make sense of other fields.... epistemology is the field about knowledge.
We don't KNOW that physicalism or naturalism are correct metaphysical positions, we don't have to waste our time on the epistemology of that, but those positions make sense of the empirical findings science have found better than labels like non-physicalism or supernaturalism would. It would be metaphysically confused and confusing to describe the natural world as non-physical or supernatural when it's clearly physical and natural.
Metaphysical positions aren't about knowing stuff, they're about using positions that make sense and aren't confused messes.
When Lawrence Krauss talks about a universe from nothing, this 'nothing' that he speaks of makes sense scientifically, but that's because what he's talking about ISN'T actually nothing... and that's why he's metaphysically confused.
I'm less interested in knowledge and science and empricism than I am metaphysics and logic and ethics.... because I'm not a very practical person and I'd rather think about stuff than do stuff. Even when it comes to ethics, I find practical ethics dull.
To each their own, but I have a developmental disorder so it's no surprise that I'm not interested in practical issues when I struggle with them so much. But at least I *do* understand the impractical stuff, at least I *do* understand that calling something "nothing" makes no sense, and I can understand why both philosophers and more philosophical physicists criticized Lawrence for his confusion.
"What is existence?"
Isn't the same as "How can we know what existence is?"
The latter question is epistemological, the former is about definitions. But definitions aren't meaningless... it helps to say things that make sense. An example of another metaphysical confusion is positions of pantheism that literally believe in nothing more than a universe but they call that universe "God". That is metaphysically confused and confusing, especially when they then equivocate and make logical fallacies without realizing they're doing it because of that confusion. Just as Lawrence says things like "But it really *is* nothing", no it isn't and it cannot be. There isn't any thing that can *be* nothing lawrence. That's like talking about a 5 sided square that really is 5 sided when there are no 5 sided squares.
It's not helpful to use supernaturalistic labels to describe the natural world, and it's not helpful to call something "nothing". Confusing people doesn't help.
Another reason why I find epistemology less interesting than metaphysics is because I don't think we can know which is the right way to know. We just have to pick the position that is most useful to is. There becomes the problem of metaepistemology. It's not about knowing what is the right definition, it's about making a decision, about choosing the position that makes the most sense and THEN going from there to know stuff. We have to start with definitions FIRST. Epistemology comes AFTERWARDS.
To have a discussion with someone about epistemology or science, we first have to speak the same language and actually say things that make sense to each other. If someone is talking in their own private language that no one else understands, it's going to be very hard for them to do any science. Especially if they're so confused that they don't even understand or can't even make sense of their own private language! Then they'll struggle to make sense of even private discoveries. There's a reason science came out of the deep thinking of philosophy.
And I think I basically agree with you. Philosophy is strongest when it investigates the various possible definitions, comparing them to see which is most useful. Sometimes even finding the right definitions is hard work (such happens all the time in mathematics).
The problem I can see is that many people become dogmatic about their metaphysics. So, for example, they may take an Aristotelian definition of 'substance' and not update it to reflect what we have discovered over the last 200 years. They may take a definition of 'vacuum' that identifies it with 'nothing', which may have been appropriate 800 years ago, but is not today. They may take the idea of 'potential existence' and use it for some pretty horrid arguments, while ignoring the difficulties with that idea that have been found over the past 2000 years. Or, they may reject the idea of an 'actual infinity' because they don't fully understand the implications of the Cantorian revolution.
So, maybe the way philosophy stays relevant is to continually look at definitions in the light of new discoveries, modifying them as appropriate given the new *knowledge* we have.
I will disagree with the goal of say, metaphysics, as it is done by most philosophers. The goal is to get *knowledge* about the basic aspects of existence and how to classify them. Epistemology then considers *how* we can know things. And that is a different sort of 'knowledge'.
